1985: The news of a stretching programme, or “jumboisation” as it is often known, was announced, but it only originally planned to deal with the PRINSES MARIA-ESMERALDA and the PRINCESSE MARIE-CHRISTINE, leaving the PRINS ALBERT untouched. By cutting the ships horizontally and inserting an extra lorry deck, their capacity was raised from 46 to 55 pieces of freight. The “PME” had her work completed at the end of May 1985 while the “PMC” re-entered service in January 1986. All work was carried out at Boelwerf Vlaanderen (Boel Yard Flanders) (the former Cockerill Yards at Hoboken) .

April 23rd 1986: Suffered a minor fire in an electrical locker and the damage was repaired at Boelwerf, Antwerp.

January 15th 1987: Collided with a container ship, and suffered minor damage to her stern and one of her propellers.

January 17th 1987: Sailed to Mercantile, Antwerp for repairs.

October 1987: The agreement with Townsend Thoresen (The European Ferries Group) was duly passed on to P&O European Ferries and was due to end in December 1990: The Ostend ships all received the Townsend Thoresen orange colours and carried their trading name.

1987/88 (refit): A completely new livery reflecting that carried by the P&O European Ferries fleet was adopted. For the first time in the history of the Dover-Ostend service, the buff (later changed to a lighter shade of yellow) funnels were painted- out in favour of a shade of blue.

1991:The creation of a totally new marketing profile and the adoption of the name with which the line has officially been known since the early days, sees the fleet in its fourth livery in seven years. The first to receive it was the PRINS ALBERT during her overhaul at Ostend in November and December 1990.

1993 (end): Announced that the Belgian company did not intend to renew its marketing agreement with P&O European Ferries, but instead concluded a deal with Sally Line. With effect from the following January RMT became known simply as Oostende Lines , transferring all its Ostend services, including Jetfoil operations from Dover to Sally’s base at Ramsgate

“The ferry ‘Beni Ansar’ which has now been renamed ‘AQABA EXPRESS‘ has been impounded in Almería port by the Ministry for the Environment. The ship has been held there since July 12 as the Ministry tries to stop it being sent for scrap in India. Such scrapping is carried out on beaches in India, without any safety or toxicity controls, and the Ministry wants to ensure that before the vessel sets sale that oil, fuel, batteries and other chemicals on board are removed. It’s the first case of its kind in Spain and the ship scrap-yard is reported to be angry at the delays.T he ship owners say there is nowhere in the EU to scrap such a vessel, and they were planning to scrap the vessel in Romania and not India anyway.”

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